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This is the gimmick that Nokia is using to pitch their new flagship model 8, which was finally made official late yesterday. From the camera app you can access both the front and rear-facing camera feeds simultaneously in a 50/50 split window, like you see you above. "Bothies" can be photos, recorded video or even live video streamed to Facebook and/or YouTube.

If nothing else, it's an apt demonstration that the camera modules on either side of the phone are identical—though there's an additional monochrome sensor on the back. Die-hard Nokia fans will probably be most interested in the ZEISS logo on the rear camera assembly.

The Nokia 8 will be available for purchase on September 6th with a price tag of €599 EUR, or about $700 USD. Here's the bad news: Nokia has no immediate plans to bring their flagship to North America. Could be good news for grey market importers, though...!

Hot on the heels of yesterday's story about Snap, Inc.'s Spectacles comes this brand-new streaming camera called Front Row. It's available right now from Amazon.com (and ships to Canada) but will set you back $400 USD.

Instead of putting a camera on your face you wear this device around your neck—with the included lanyard or a necklace of your own—or by clipping it to a piece of clothing. Apparently the idea for the product came from the CEO of Ubiquiti Networks, who was at an NBA game and wanted to livestream his view without holding up his phone.

Fair enough, but why is this thing so big...?

Because on the other side of this Android-powered camera system there's a full touchscreen. And also a selfie cam. The Front Row, it seems, is like an un-ruggedized GoPro made specifically for livestreaming. Interesting idea; not sure if it's worth the high price tag, though.

A story published in yesterday's news round-up is worthy of a little more scrutiny... according to TechCrunch, sales of Snap, Inc.'s camera-equipped Spectacles are falling hard, and fast.

In their first full sales quarter fewer than 64,000 Spectacles were sold. If that doesn't sound like much here's the really bad news: Q2 was even worse, with sales of only 41,500 units—a drop of roughly 35%. Snap recently started selling Spectacles through Amazon.com and Harrod's in the UK, but I don't foresee either of these entities reversing the company's fortunes anytime soon. Amazon, if anything, will just enable easier returns.

One reason for the failure of this product has to be the obvious privacy issue; I just don't think our society is ready for people wearing cameras on their faces. It's reminiscent of my feelings about Google Glass—I was really excited about it's AR potential until I encountered someone wearing it in New York City; with the realization that I was probably being recorded I suddenly wasn't so interested anymore.

There's also the fashion angle, or in the case of Spectacles the lack thereof. Imagine if, like Android Wear, Snap put aside their single, in-house design and instead partnered with established eyewear brands like Ray-Ban or Oakley. This way, Snap users could use the technology with their own sunglass style. As an added bonus, there would be a sales channel for Snap already in place.

Or maybe Spectacles are just a bad idea altogether. What do you think?

One of the major criticisms of the OnePlus 5 (after the price) was the discovery and subsequent confirmation of its inverted display. OnePlus has never explained why they chose to mount the display panel upside-down in the phone's chassis; I suspect that it was a deliberate engineering choice to make that chassis stronger. Unfortunately for the user, however, this results in a screen that refreshes in an odd way. It's most noticeable when scrolling through long lists like entries in an app drawer or a Twitter feed, and has come to be known as the jelly effect.

It was XDA who proved that the OP5's display was upside-down, and now they're reporting that Motorola's new Z2 Force has the same issue.
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Wareable scored a nice little scoop with some exclusive renders of Project Higgs—aka the Fitbit smartwatch—which they insist is the final design for the product. I use the term "design" loosely here, because I think this thing is as ugly as hell, only slightly less hideous than Fitbit's existing Blaze.

Note that the Fitbit logo takes up a full fifth of the front face.

The back of the watch has a deliberate protrusion to better lock on to your heart rate. Wareable is speculating that the blue light at the bottom is a pulse oximeter for measuring blood oxygen levels. Whatever the case, it looks super-uncomfortable.

The strap looks like it has a proprietary connection but can at least be swapped out. That's a good thing, as Fitbit's straps have a tendency to break. A lot.

There will apparently be three available colour combinations, none of which will do anything for its looks. You'll only ever want to wear this for a night out if that night out is at the gym.

Mind you, this derision and disdain is coming from a self-professed smartwatch design snob; what do you think of Fitbit's smartwatch?

OpenSignal has been very, er... "open" about sharing their data on network speeds around the world; they even have their own speed-testing app, called Meteor. But what about the app that people actually use?

I've been using Ookla's Speedtest.net for years to test my broadband connection through my desktop browser; ditto for for the Android app. Perhaps because of OpenSignal, Ookla has just published a Global Speed Index of their own.

The results have been gathered from more than 6,000 servers in 190 countries. The good news? Canada ranked highest in North America, with an average download speed of 35.19 Mbps. The bad news? We're 13th worldwide. The really bad news? High prices, no unlimited data plans, lack of compelling MVNOs... Shall I go on?

The United States ranked 43rd overall, with an average download speed of 23.05 Mbps. Here are the countries in the top ten worldwide:

Welcome back to your Pebble appreciation station. Today I'm here to tell you about a limited edition soft cover book showcasing the work of premier watchface designer Albert Salamon, who sells his work in the Pebble app store under the TTMM brand.

Watchface design, particularly on a 144 by 168 pixel canvas, can be a very subjective thing, but this designer has actually won awards for his work. His book, available through eBay, features 100 TTMM faces—including some that haven't even been released yet! As a bonus, you'll receive a customized KiezelPay code that will unlock everything you see in the book.

These are the two TTMM faces that I have installed on my own Pebble Time Steel. FEELTTMM (left) shows you the current temperature via a colour panel which changes from blue to yellow to green to red depending on how cold or hot it is outside. TTMMBRN is a funky LCD-style face paying tribute to the Jason Bourne movies (which I've never seen). Yes, my step counter is at zero, but I just woke up. Gimme a break, here...

Mr. Salamon's book is limited to 100 copies and ships from his native Poland for less than $20 USD.

Yesterday this photo of a developer unit was leaked to GSM Arena. It's believed to be the Pixel 2—the smaller, HTC-made device (codename: "walleye") with the 4.95 inch screen, rather than the LG-made Pixel 2 XL ("taimen") with the 5.99 inch display.

With all the stickers and tape the back of the unit honestly doesn't look like much; fortunately, the anonymous leaker also supplied a photo of the front of the phone.

Sorry, make that two phones... The bad news: the massive chin and forehead of the original Pixels have been carried over, but this time around they are at least partly justified by front-facing stereo speakers, a feature last seen two generations ago on the Huawei Nexus 6P.

And now the really bad news: multiple sources, including Evan Blass, are reporting that there will be no headphone jack on either of this year's Pixel phones. Because #courage...?

If you didn't know, "AR" stands for augmented reality; the ZenFone AR is the world's second-ever production handset to support Google's Project Tango, preceded only by the gargantuan (and also underpowered) Lenovo Phab Pro 2. Apps that support Project Tango are few and far between. Current showpieces include Lowe's Vision, which lets you preview Lowe's appliances and furniture in your own home, and Hot Wheels Track Builder, where you can lay out orange tracks to your heart's content in an entirely virtual space. The ZenFone AR also supports Daydream (Google's VR), and there are many more available titles which you can use with that.

There are actually three variants of the ZenFone AR: one with 6 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage for $599 USD ($899 CAD), another with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage for $699 USD and also a Verizon-exclusive version with 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage for $649 USD.

CNET has an in-depth preview of the phone with video and a gallery of photos; for links to that along with current buying options see directly below.

OpenSignal has just published their findings on the current state of mobile networks in the USA, using over five million measurements from over a hundred and fifty thousand phones between April and June of this year. T-Mobile in particular saw some impressive results, scoring the highest of all carriers nationwide in each of OpenSignal's six critical metrics:

To see how carriers performed regionally read the report in full at the link below. And remember, if you disagree with any of these results you can make the next test more accurate by installing the OpenSignal app for Android or iOS.